


Railroad

by sarahmonious



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quantum Realm, Science Bros, Scott Lang Needs a Hug, Scott Lang-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 03:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17216477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahmonious/pseuds/sarahmonious
Summary: Post Infinity War part 1 and Ant-Man and the Wasp.Determined to escape the quantum realm, Scott tries anything he can think of to return home. In his most desperate hour, something bizarre happens, and not long after, he's pulled from the quantum realm by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.





	Railroad

The shift from annoyance to panic is as rapid as his heartbeat. His adrenaline spikes, ears ringing. Something’s wrong. Something’s very obviously wrong.

“Anybody?! C’mon!” he shouts again.

Maybe Ava had a change of heart and decided to take over the machine for herself? No. There’s no way. She’d have no idea how to operate it, and based on her gratefulness for how much Janet has helped her, it would make no sense.

Something else, then. Someone else who knew about the bridge? Nobody knew except for the four of them, and of course Ava and Bill.

Someone had taken them out, or was in the process of, and there was jack shit he could do about it.

He didn’t realize he was hyperventilating until he saw the canister drift away, out of his numb hands. Ava. God, Ava—she’d be fine for a while, but only for so long.

He reaches out and pulls back the canister, just in case. Just in case this was some kind of weird fluke and both the bridge and the comms went down at the same time.

He drifts.

He barely remembers his time spent in the quantum realm before. How Janet was able to stay coherent for so long, he has no idea. Even now, his breathing goes ragged and his vision swims. Something about this place. He tries desperately to hold on to his own consciousness, but it’s a swiftly lost battle.

Lucidity comes and goes. The sheer helplessness of the situation bubbles up in overwhelming panic, forcing him back unconscious. That cycle happens a few times before he gets a grip—as much as he can—and starts thinking through his options.

Messing with the regulator may have helped him last time, but it’s out of the question now. Not only had Hank fixed its issues (or so he claimed), but Scott had no tools or means to disrupt the suit’s current status.

Janet was able to reach out to him—through him—but only because of their shared… experience… or whatever. He never asked her how she did it. He wishes like hell he had.

When Scott is able to stay conscious and aware, the surrounding space is, well, beautiful. Cold and lonely, but beautiful. And completely devoid of anything that could help him.

Time passes. Or, at least, he thinks it does. Hard to tell, between all the losing consciousness and no frame of reference for literally anything.

What if he’s stuck here as long as Janet was?

What if he’s stuck here longer? Forever?

Would being stuck in this realm even allow him to die?

He can’t be sure, but he thinks he goes under for a while after that thought.

***

Somewhere—some _when_ —a small idea sparks.

Janet had gotten some pretty cool glowy magic fingers and could reach out to others with her brain after being stuck down here for so long. Maybe… maybe he could do the same? Then again, thirty years was a long time to be able to practice those tricks.

Fortunately, practicing magic after being stuck somewhere for an extended period of time is something he had experience in.

So. Okay. Janet. She’s the obvious choice, what with their connection. If she could reach him, maybe the reverse was also true. How? No idea.

He starts by thinking about her. To her. Projecting. Long distance Vulcan mind meld?

He feels silly about it for a while until he remembers there are literally no other options.

He thinks, projects, with what feels like every synapse in his brain, sometimes so much so that he later finds himself slowly swimming back to consciousness.

While Janet may be his focus, sometimes his thoughts can’t help but stray to Cassie and how she must feel. Her dad, gone again. He wants out if only to reassure her that he didn’t just up and disappear again, that this was something beyond his control, and that he loves her more than anything in the world.

He projects to her too; has no idea what good it will even do, but desperation outweighs logic.

It feels a bit like the meditation techniques Hope forced him to try after a few of their sparring sessions. Hope. Scott forces his thoughts away from what could have possibly happened topside before panic overwhelms him again.

God, he hopes she’s okay.

It’s endless hours, days… weeks? Focusing harder and harder on something so singular that he wants so badly.

He almost misses the flash in front of him, brief and iridescent.

His muscles tense, and he blinks, wondering what the hell he just did to make that happen, or if that was even him at all. He sinks down deep again, chases whatever _thing_ he just did, every fiber of his being pleading for a repeat performance. He wants out; he wants out _so badly_.

The iridescence explodes around him this time, and his breath punches out of him.

He sees—

He sees—

People. Creatures. Things that definitely aren’t human. Millions upon billions. Half in shadow, wandering, listless. It’s too much at once, too much to comprehend, and his eyes dart frantically, reflexively trying to find something familiar to settle on.

As if reading his thoughts, his view blurs, and then suddenly zooms in on someone who looks familiar. Scott squints, and the person becomes more defined and in better range of his vision.

Falcon—Sam Wilson, huddles with a few other figures. There’s no way to discern them from the shadows of this place until he focuses in on them individually: someone who definitely looks like Cap’s friend, Bucky, and some kid who looks no older than eighteen.

“…with what it is.” Their conversation is muffled and distorted, like an improperly tuned Ham radio.

Bucky shakes his head. “Not really an option,” he says.

They fall silent for the moment, and Scott stares, wide-eyed at the background behind them: creatures the likes of which he’s never seen before, save in sci-fi movies. Legit aliens. Animals too, and people. So many people.

“What the _hell_ ,” he whispers.

The second the words leave his lips, the kid sitting with Sam and Bucky whips around to focus directly on Scott, as if he were there standing with them.

“Guys,” the kid says. “There’s something—I think there’s something here.”

“Some _thing_?” Sam asks. “Some _one_? What do you mean?"

“I don’t know,” the kid says. Scott is frozen, heart thumping loudly in his chest. “I just feel… something.”

“Fantastic,” Bucky mutters, eyes scanning the area.

Scott is terrified to move, blink, think, to do anything to sever whatever this connection is, if this isn’t some crazy hallucination that his mushed-up, quantum realm brain has cooked up. It’s like the kid is looking right at him, but not seeing him.

“Hello?” the kid says tentatively.

Scott takes a breath and opens his mouth, and the connection severs harder than a snapped tension wire.

He feels as though he’s been flung the length of a football field, and his brain is in agony. But he has to do that again. Whatever he just did. He must.

Unconsciousness claims him instead, this time for a very long time.

***

The next thing he knows, he feels as though he’s being pulled into a million-mile long straw at the speed of light.

And then—

Solid ground. Blinding white light.

“Lang?"

The word reverberates through his skull, like an epic hangover from his undergrad years. He scrunches his eyes tight and groans.

“Is he okay?” he hears distantly.

“Initial guess is no, but I’d rather hear from the man himself. Scott? You okay, buddy?”

Gravity is… weird. He feels as though he’s got fifty-pound weights attached to his limbs.

He’s still in the suit and helmet, the latter of which is very bad news for what’s about to happen next. Fortunately his reflexes are still fast enough, and it snaps open just in time for him to roll to the side and heave.

“Oh boy,” one of the someones above him says and reaches down to help steady himself so he doesn’t faceplant into his own mess.

When his stomach is done with whatever issues it’s having, he rolls back over and tries his best to blink his eyes open. Two people-shaped blurs hover over him.

“Scott? ¿Comprendes inglés? How many fingers am I holding up?”

He blinks again, and finally the blur sharpens into—

“Stark?”

“There he is!” Stark says, and Scott thinks he sounds way too jubilant for someone who had last spoken to him from the other side of a prison cell.

Another someone peers from over Stark’s shoulder, and even though Scott’s brain feels like it’s running on safe mode, he immediately recognizes who it is. “Oh—hey, you’re Dr. Bruce Banner.”

“I am,” the man acknowledges. He smiles, but it’s very obviously tinged with nervousness. “It’s nice to finally meet you."

Scott wants to reply, but his head is absolutely pounding. “What happened? How did you get me out? Wait a minute—” a jolt of panic flows through him, making his headache worse. “Where are Hope and Hank and Janet? Have you seen them?”

He sees Stark and Dr. Banner exchange glances, but it’s all too much; sensory overload after however long floating in the void. He can feel himself shutting down.

“Think I’m gonna pass out now, sorry,” he slurs, and then follows through on his word.

***

_The world stretches out in front of him, seemingly infinite._

_He sees blurs—shapes—so many. Aimless. Despondent. He can’t see their faces, can’t hear what they’re saying, but he can feel them as if those emotions were his own._

_But then the shapes sharpen, so much so until they’re fractals, reflections, distorted faces in snapshot frames. A family of five, noses all the same shape, from old, to middle aged, to newborn. A teenager and her friend, clinging to each other. He wants to reach out and call to them, ask them who they are, what they’re doing here._

_He sees—a man. Scruffy and eyebrows drawn downward. Next to him, a bald, grey-skinned… alien? whose face is contorted with rage. And then a woman with beetle-black eyes and honest-to-god antennae. The sentient tree behind them doesn’t even surprise him at that point. They’re angry. Afraid. Confused. It’s stifling, overwhelming. He wants so badly to help, but he’s just as stuck as they are. Doesn’t even know how to help, even if he could._

_The world stretches on. Blurs, shapes, more than his eyes can count. Despair washes over him. Nothing he can do._

***

This time, awareness comes back to him slowly. Soft bed. Cool sheets. Distant beeping.

Hospital.

Luxury accommodations hospital with really nice soft sheets?

Despite how unbelievably bone-weary he still feels, he opens his eyes.

The room is spartan, high-tech, and clean. Gadgets and screens the likes of which he’s only seen at Hank’s lab blink and hum. He’s alone.

It feels like a bizarre dream, being back in this reality; this realm. But it shouldn’t. It should be the opposite. This _realm_? This was—home. Where he had given every ounce of his effort to return.

His thoughts are interrupted by a nurse who looks like she works at a space station, not a makeshift hospital room.

“Mr. Lang,” she says, checking the monitor above Scott. “Glad to see you’re awake. How are you feeling?"

“Never—” he coughs, voice hoarse. “Never better. Where am I?”

“Upstate New York. Avengers headquarters. I believe you’ve already made the trip here once yourself?”

Scott grunts in the affirmative, distracted. “Were there any other people or uh,” he pauses, almost choking, “bodies, when I… when I came out? Hank Pym and Janet, and their daughter, Hope. Do you know them? Or where they might be?”

Before she can reply, they’re interrupted by Stark striding in.

“Glad to see you awake, Scott,” he says, pointing a finger at him. “How’s the head? How’s the… everything?”

Scott’s head is still pounding, which makes his frustration level rise faster than it normally would. “Hank and Janet and Hope,” he grits out. “I want answers.”

Stark and the nurse trade glances, an echo of when Stark did the same with Dr. Banner after his retrieval from the quantum realm.

“Look,” Stark says. “Scott… a lot’s changed since you went into the quantum realm.”

“You knew where I was? Wait… how did you get me out?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Dr. Banner says from behind the two of them. “The extraction was… crude. We did our best with what information we could find in the lab. It’s probably why you’re still feeling a bit off. Sorry about that.”

“No, hey,” Scott says. “I’m just glad to be out. So, really, thank you. I just… I don’t understand. What do you mean, with what info you could find in the lab? Something happened to them, didn’t it?” He tries his best to keep himself in check, but the heart rate monitor he’s hooked up to betrays him. He feels like he might puke again. All that time spent worrying about what had happened while stuck in the quantum realm, and now he was going to hear the words, find out that they had been killed, or worse.

“Where to start,” Stark murmurs, more to himself. “Where to even start. Okay. CliffNotes version. ” He claps his hands together and faces Scott directly.

“There was a cataclysmic, universal event that destroyed… a lot of things. Half of all living beings in the universe. In an instant. One second they were here, and the next, they were dust, as if they never existed. You remember Sunday School, the Rapture, all that jazz? Like that, but with less fire and brimstone and more natural collapse of society due to half its occupants disappearing. There was an alien, a—titan god—who saw fit to take what he thought was overpopulation and diminishing resources into his own hands. We tried to stop him, but….”

With every word Stark says, a keen and terrible dread settles deeper into Scott, and his mouth feels dry as he asks, “And—and how long ago was this?”

Stark sighs, softly. “Five years to the month. It’s been five years since you went into the quantum realm. All evidence points to Hank Pym, and Janet and Hope Van Dyne disappearing during the event. I’m sorry.”

The silence in the room is heavy, the low beep of the monitors its only rhythmic interruption.

“Jesus Christ,” Scott finally says, faintly. Just like when he was pulled from the quantum realm, it all feels like too much to process. It seems unreal, like a cruel joke. How could something like this even have happened?

Another thought overcomes him. “If it’s been five years and they’re—gone—how did you guys even know where to look for me, or _how_ to look for me?”

That, for whatever reason, puts a small smile on Stark’s face. He taps at his watch. “Funny you should ask,” he says. He then looks over to the door, where a young girl enters. Scott stares. Her brown hair, her eyes, wide and uncertain—

“Dad?” she says.

“Cassie?” His heart leaps in his throat. “Oh my god, Cassie—” He tries to scramble out of bed, but she runs over to him before he can even throw off the covers. His body aches and protests where she grabs him for a hug, but he doesn’t care in the slightest, would rather have centuries of pain just to be able to hold her again.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart, oh god, I’m so sorry—” he doesn’t even know what he’s saying, just so grateful and relieved that she’s here and real. He’ll take the loss of civilization and his friends, and it’ll hurt, but this—there’s no comparison.

“Daddy,” she sobs, tears soaking into his hospital gown.

He closes his eyes, clutches her close, and cries.

***

They sit together for a while, contemplating their losses. (“Your mom and Paxton?” he asks softly. She shakes her head against his chest, silent.)

“I never thought I’d see you again,” she says, finally pulling away from him. He looks at her, an ache in his heart; he’s missed years watching her grow, learning new facets of her personality.

“Never thought I’d see you again either, Peanut.” He smiles. “I can still call you ‘Peanut,’ right? Your birthday was four months ago, so you’re…” he pretends to do a quick calculation in his head, and then gasps, “thirteen? My baby girl is thirteen now?”

She giggles, and it’s the best thing he’s heard in five years. “You can still call me that. Just not in front of the Avengers.”

“The Avengers, huh? You know, technically I’m an Avenger.”

“Not if I’ve taken your spot.” She outright smirks.

He blinks. “Not if you’ve what?”

He doesn’t get an answer, as Stark takes that moment to step back into the room.

“Hey—Langs—Lang and Lang? Do you feel up to joining us in the conference room?”

It’s a slow shamble to a room down the hall and just to the left, Cassie’s arm around him all the way. They step into the doorway, and Scott sees Dr. Banner and—

“Captain?”

The outrageously handsome man in question stands and shakes Scott’s hand. “’Steve’ is good,” he says with a small smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Uh,” he breathes, a little overwhelmed. “Better than I have in five years, I think.”

“Glad to hear it,” Steve says. “Listen—I never got a chance to say I’m sorry about what happened after Germany. I never meant for prison and house arrest to be in the picture.”

“Nah, hey, all good.” It kinda sucked a lot, but there was no way in hell Scott would ever tell Steve that. “I was just happy to be on the right side. Uh,” he glances at Tony. “No offence, Stark.”

Stark waves a hand but definitely looks a little annoyed. “Bigger fish to fry right now, fellas.”

“Right,” Steve says. “Have a seat. We have a lot to discuss.”

***

Questions still swirl in Scott’s head, but having Cassie here is like a bright and shining beacon against everything else. So he starts there.

“So—how on earth did Cassie get mixed up with all this?” he asks.

“Hey, don’t blame us,” Stark said, palms up defensively. “She found us, not the other way around.”

His eyes land on hers, and she shrugs. “I did what I had to do,” she says quietly, sounding way older than her thirteen years. “It was—hard for a while. I had to fend for myself. But I remembered all the discussions you had with Hope, about research, and the Avengers, and everything else, so I just—started researching. And once I was sure, I, um—I stowed away in trucks and stuff to cross the country, to get here.”

He feels sick.

“And then you just—knocked on the front door?”

Steve smiles faintly. “She tried to break in,” he says. “Got pretty close, too.”

“I guess it runs in the family.” She gives a lopsided smile.

“She’s a smart kid, Scott. I’ve been putting her through the ropes during downtime. Reckon she’d be skipped ahead a few grades, if school was still a thing that existed,” Stark says.

Complete collapse of society. Right.

“So—how did you guys know where to find me? _Where_ did you guys know to find me?” he asks next.

There’s a hesitation around the table. “Cassie can probably answer that one too,” Steve finally says.

Scott turns questioningly to his daughter. “Cassie?”

She fidgets. “I know this is gonna sound weird, but… I—I heard you. I thought—we all thought it was just a strange kind of… hallucination… in the middle of the day. But it sounded so _real_. And then not long after, I felt this weird pull. I told them,” she gestures to Dr. Banner and Stark, “and… they found you.”

Scott’s heart pounds in his chest. “It worked,” he says faintly. “I can’t believe it worked.”

“Are you saying _you_ somehow did that?” says Stark.

“Before… before all of this, when I was helping Hope and Hank find Janet in the quantum realm, Janet was able to… connect with me,” he replies, mind whirling. “She was able to provide the precise location of where she was to them through me. So I tried the same thing. I tried to reach out to Janet first, but obviously that wouldn’t have worked. And then I kept thinking about Cassie….”

“Some kind of telepathic link,” Dr. Banner pipes up.

“Yeah, but we had thought the link Janet and I had in visiting the quantum realm made that possible. But obviously Cassie’s never been there.”

“Maybe it manifests differently for different people?” Steve suggests.

Scott thinks for a moment, an alarming thought burgeoning as they speak. “I think—I think I saw them. Everyone.”

Steve tenses. “What do you mean, ‘everyone’?”

“People. Creatures. Aliens. Millions upon millions. Just… wandering in some vast space. I thought it was the quantum realm messing with my head.” His eyes widen, and he stares at Steve, remembering. “I saw Barnes and Wilson. With some kid.”

The silence feels like a crushing weight. The second the words leave him, he wonders if it was such a good idea to share that bit of info. What good is it to know but not be able to do anything about it?

“Holy shit,” Stark finally says, eyes distant. “You’re sure, Scott? This wasn’t just some kooky quantum realm hallucination?”

“What did the kid look like, the one who was with Barnes and Wilson?” Dr. Banner asks.

“Um,” Scott thinks back, trying to remember. “Caucasian, brown hair that was a little on the long side, young kid, young face. Maybe 16 or 17?”

“Peter. He wouldn’t have seen his face in Germany with the mask on,” Steven says.

“Jesus,” Stark breathes. “That means—”

“They exist,” Banner says. “In some dimension or plane of existence, they exist.”

***

Not long after, Dr. Banner and Stark break away to their lab, and Steve also heads out to, Scott presumes, punch through a couple of brick walls.

The nurse comes in and leads Scott back to his hospital bed for one more night’s observation. Cassie sleeps next to him, glued to his side, and though the bed is small, neither of them mind.

Every day thereafter is filled with talking, rehashing, schematics, recounting every single thing he remembers from the quantum realm, drawing on paper from his mind’s eye, over and over again until Scott’s brain feels numb.

All until Dr. Banner comes to bring Scott to the lab for what he was told was a “breakthrough.”

“I… what?”

“I’m sorry,” Stark says to him, and he really does look thoroughly apologetic.

“I only just got back. I only just got Cassie back. After five years. And you want me to just jump right back in?”

“No,” Dr. Banner says honestly. “We hate to ask you, Scott. I’d rather go myself. But you’ve gone in twice now and survived. Not only that, you have a connection that seems to go both ways. We wouldn’t ask unless there were no other options.”

“I don’t even know if what I did before is doable again. Much less potentially opening up some kind of portal, or whatever, to somehow zap back billions of living beings!” He feels like he’s the only sane person in the room, pointing out the extremely obvious.

“We have some theories,” Dr. Banner says with infuriating calm. “We’ve been doing some tests around the energy fields of the device, and the results are promising. More than promising. Unfortunately there’s not much else we can do from the outside.”

Scott’s stomach roils, and he feels himself shake down to his bones. The constant, suffocating nightmare of being trapped again now feels dangerously real.

He feels a tug on his arm and looks down to see Cassie, brown eyes bright and fear sharp on her face. “Dad…” she whispers. “It’s… it’s okay. I know you can do it. I know you’ll come back.”

“We’ll be with you every step of the way, buddy,” Stark says, handing him an earpiece. “Not only that, but Bruce and I modified the machine and the jump point. Easier transition, vid communication, the works. We’ll make sure everything goes according to plan.”

“You can’t,” Scott says, he’ll admit, a little hysterically. “There’s no way you can ensure everything goes according to plan, because I’m pretty sure opening a portal to another dimension to somehow get back billions of living beings hasn’t been done before!”

Stark hums, knocking a knuckle on the table. “Yeah. Although… There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? Don’t you want to be the Neil Armstrong of interdimensional rescue relief? Pretty sure you’d overtake me as ‘Most Badass Avenger’.”

He snorts in amused disbelief, even though panic threatens to overtake him, realizing what Stark is trying to do. “You just like me for my brain and the weird shit it can do."

“That and your winning smile.” He gestures to the back of the lab, where the quantum realm awaits. “You can do this, Scott. I have the utmost faith in you.”

He nods slightly, surrendering his protests as he looks to Stark, and Dr. Banner, and then Steve, who’s been observing quietly.

“Thank you,” he finally says to Scott.

Scott shakes his head. “Don’t thank me yet.” He knows what Steve is thinking, and deep down, he’s also shoring up a desperate faith in being able to reach Hope too.

No more delaying the inevitable. He gives Cassie a tight hug and a kiss on her head.

Stark and Dr. Banner power up the machine, checking readings as they go. The tunnel gleams into existence, bright and beckoning.

Scott closes his helmet and waits for the pull.


End file.
